Iowa This Week -- Dan Beenken and Soneeta Mangra-Dutcher -- Nov. 07-08, 2026

Welcome to Iowa This Week.

I'm Tim Harwood.

Coming up, a look at how one Northeast Iowa community has been getting organized ahead of the holidays.

First, the 2026 Iowa Family Business Conference will be in Pella on Wednesday.

Many prominent family businesses will be represented.

This morning, we get the details from Dan Binken, Director of the University of Northern Iowa's Family Business Center.

Thank you for being with us.

Hey, thank you so much for having me.

Thank you very much for the time.

Appreciate being able to talk a little bit about family-owned companies and in our conference coming up.

We're excited about it.

We've got a record number of attendees this year, and we're still taking registrations from folks.

So if you're interested in coming, go to unifamilybusinesscenter.com and register.

We'd love to have you with us.

Well, it looks like it's going to be a full day next Wednesday from 9 until 6.

How's the whole thing coming together when it comes to the programming?

Yeah, it's coming along great.

So our mission is about helping family-owned companies see paths forward in succession planning and ways to kind of practice good family governance to keep family-owned companies family-owned from one gen to the next.

Conference reflects that.

So our conference is made up mostly of speakers from family-owned companies.

So you'll see folks from Bella Windows, Vermeer Manufacturing, Paulson Electric, many others that'll be talking about how they have done different things to strategize, like I said, family governance, succession.

even topics like philanthropy, etc.

And so it very much functions as a conference of peers in a large peer-to-peer learning type of atmosphere is what we try to promote.

So rather than hearing from consultants and service providers, you're hearing from other families who have been where you maybe are going or where you are and that kind of thing is what our focus is.

Is the topic of succession, generational succession from one part of the family to another or from parent to child, whatever it might be?

Is that the biggest concern or the most common thing that's top of mind for these family companies?

I think so.

I think a lot of things relate to succession.

So if you use that as the umbrella topic, it covers a lot of ground that encompasses the different things that are on their mind.

fair versus equal in the, you know, estate planning realm and the moving down of the company from one generation to the next is incredibly delicate and it can be conflictive.

And we're here to help family see ways to make that a smoother transition.

But yeah, succession is the big thing.

You know, there's some different stats out there, Tim, that say that

Only about one in three family businesses makes it to the third generation of ownership, right?

And in those stats, if you ever hear them, they actually account for business failures and financial issues.

The fact that most family-owned companies don't make it to the third generation isn't because they don't have a good business.

It's because the family and human issues...

get in the way of things.

And so we're here to help provide a platform to talk about that.

We're talking with Dan Binkin, director of the University of Northern Iowa's Family Business Center.

The center is hosting the Iowa Family Business Conference.

It's the sixth one of those conferences.

And Dan, what about the Pella Corporation do you want to bring in?

What's unique about their story that you feel like folks who are attending are going to hear?

Yeah, they have a very unique story.

Nationally, they have a unique story.

Of course, the family business is based in Pella and has grown tremendously over the years.

And the Kuiper family originally started it, still owns it today.

And one governance rule they have as a family is that family members actually cannot work in the family business.

And so that's very unique compared to most any other family-owned company that we interact with.

And they also readily talk about, you know, that being where things are at now, but that governance changes and family changes and so that might need to adapt over time.

But I think that's a big thing for them.

is that uniqueness of how they have been able to do that over time and continue to be such an incredible pillar of economic development, not only in Pella, but across our state.

If they weren't locally owned, we would feel a pretty big hit from that.

And so it's a testament to their family of how they do things and how they run the business and how they

keep ownership and management separate.

And I think our families will hear a pretty cool story about that.

So I would say that's their uniqueness.

You mentioned Vermeer Corporation also in Pella.

What kinds of things are they going to be talking about?

What kind of presence are they going to have at this event, which is actually at the Vermeer Museum and Global Pavilion?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Vermeer was started by Gary Vermeer.

Tinkering on his own farm place with ideas and you know, obviously it's now developed into a company that employs thousands Operates globally out of Pella Their family story is unique in that they're currently led by a third-generation family.

They have only family shareholders all over all over the country But they all have a real strong passion for

for the company, for the family, and for the community that they're in.

And I don't know, Tim, if you've probably been to Pella before, and you know, it's an amazing community.

It's a very unique community.

And a lot of that uniqueness comes from the fact that those family-owned companies have chosen to stay there.

They've chosen to grow there.

and they've chosen to reinvest there.

And that's the whole mission of our program is to help other families see those paths forward and do those same things.

We live in a world now of extreme private equity and money from the outside coming in, buying out companies here in Iowa.

And I don't have to remind you of how that often ends for those Iowa communities with

potential closings, layoffs, et cetera.

So we're really focused on sharing the family business, local ownership story, and Vermeer just really encapsulates that incredibly well.

So we're excited to share that.

Give us something that we haven't already talked about, Dan, that you think is a selling point that you'd want people to know about.

Even if your family has

some challenge in terms of communication, conflict, inability to talk about the elephant in the room.

You're not alone.

Our center works with a couple hundred family businesses annually and that exact topic is the main thing that our mission is about is showing you that you're not alone and showing you that there are paths forward.

There's great strategies on how to

bring family back together and great success stories on how that's happened.

And so even if you and your mother-in-law don't get along or you and your brother or cousins, whatever it might be, are having a hard time seeing eye to eye and you've got power struggles.

Most family businesses go through those exact challenges.

If not all family businesses go through those exact challenges.

And so our programming is meant to highlight the fact that you're not alone and the fact that there are paths forward and that communication and consistency and trying some new things usually leads to a better path forward.

So I guess I would leave it with that.

Dan Bacon is Director of the University of Northern Iowa's Family Business Center.

The 2026 Iowa Family Business Conference will be in Pella on Wednesday.

The holidays are a time to bring people together in so many ways.

This morning details about how one Northeast Iowa community is approaching a big holiday project.

Sanita Mangra Dutcher of Iowa State University Extension works with the leading communities program.

Thanks for being with us.

Yes, sure.

Glad

to be here.

Before we get too far into what's happening up in Cresco and Howard County, tell us a little bit about leading communities and what it's intended to do and what this program looks like.

Sure.

So Iowa State Extension Community and Economic Development does a program called Leading Communities.

Our program is a leadership program.

However, it's not about

necessarily individual leadership, it's about leading your community and working together to lead the community.

And so we work with over six sessions, work with people in a community that have been identified as potential leaders in their community and work with them to identify gaps in their community issues.

conflicts, different things like that, what they vision, what they prioritize, all of those things, and how to do that.

So how do you look at data?

and we provide resources for them.

How do you look at data?

Who's in your community?

What gaps are missing when you look at your boards and your leadership in your community?

Who's not being represented?

And then when you look at that, then you look at what kind of conflicts has your community had and how might you be able to assist in resolving those conflicts or making those things better for people in your community?

You look at who's at the table and who's

talking about it, what resources might the community need, things like that, and how do you identify those?

Where do you go for those resources?

Where?

Who can you ask?

And then you build those skills together, learning about all of these different resources that are available in the state, available in your community.

Who are you not tapping into?

You look at all of those things and then you work to build leadership in your community and come together to assist your community to be a better place to live, work and play.

We're talking with Sanita Mangra-Dutcher of Iowa State University Extension talking about the leading communities program and in this particular case also talking about Howard County and the community of Cresco which provides us a very timely case study.

Yeah, so I just completed our program up in Cresco for Howard County, the extension office in Howard County.

Shout out to Sue Barnes and Jason Passmore up there.

They brought us in to complete a leading communities program.

Wednesday, the 28th, I believe, was our last program.

This group has been working, like I said, for six weeks, and during their six weeks together, they thought of a project that they could all work on together and had noticed that in the past, their holiday lights...

at their courthouse had been really vibrant when they were little, growing up in the community, but that that was no longer the case, that there is still a holiday light display, but that it could be better.

And so they decided as a group, as they were learning these skills, that this might be a project that they could take on.

So they worked together and when we

taught about visioning and then when we taught about analyzing what's in the community and your resources, they started looking at their community and what they could do to bring this project to light.

So what was different about the process than if it had been somebody either at the county courthouse in one of the offices there or at the Chamber of Commerce, if they'd said, boy, the light show could be better.

Let's go buy some new lights.

So what was different about what actually happened?

So what we're doing or what they're doing is really looking at how to make this a sustainable project.

Not just a one time, let's do the courthouse this year.

They're looking at what do they already have?

Who has already been involved?

Who's missing from the table?

What's their vision?

What do they want the courthouse to do?

And really what they're looking at is how can they bring people?

to their community.

How can they bring people to their downtown to support their local businesses, their restaurants, their plant shop?

The plant dealer is a shop there and how can they bring people into that shop?

There's a jeweler there.

There's, you know, different local restaurants that it's a vibrant community, but people don't know because they haven't come to that community.

So let's bring people here.

and show them what we have by having this holiday light display and how do we continue to do that and grow it every year.

So what resources do we need to look for who has some money, who's going to store the items, how can we...

really map out what we have.

We talk about asset mapping in the program.

So what are your assets?

What do you already have?

And how do you go about finding different assets and who has those in the community?

So they're really looking at a sustainable project that they can continue year after year after year.

Sanita Mangra Dutcher of Iowa State University Extension talking about the leading communities program and how it's helping Cresco.

and the folks in Howard County.

Get ready for this holiday season.

Thanks so much for being with us, Sinita.

Thank you so much for having me.

And that's all for Iowa This Week.

We thank you for listening.

I'm Tim Harwood.